Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Cute Little Debate
Orin Kerr and Cass Sunstein are arguing over whether the phrase "Restoring the Lost Constitution" (refering, broadly, to constitutional theory with greater respect for the schema of enumerated powers that was scraped during the New Deal) is one that is (a) used by conservatives to describe their goal to return the constitution to its pre-New Deal form; (b) if not actually used as a phrase, than at least describes their goal.

It started when Sunstein wrote this piece.
Kerr responded with this piece.

Kerr's fun point so far focuses on minimizing argument (b) (he can find no evidence for argument (a) ). Basically - so what if several legal conservatives want to restore a "lost constitution" - there is a lost constitution that several legal liberals want to restore to - its called the legacy of the Warren Court.

It will be interesting to see Prof. Sunstein's response.

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